Easy Ways to Speed Up Your Computer for Free

So you are tired of your computer getting slower and slower. Well good news is around the corner! It does not matter if you have a computer that is ten years old or if it is brand new. If you follow the steps below you will notice a enormous boost in speed and performance.

One of the main causes for a slower computer is malware. Mal-ware is short for malicious software. Examples of malware are viruses, ad ware, and spy ware. It is easy to accidental download an infected file or access an infected website. This is why it is absolutely necessary to never access the Internet without a good anti virus program installed and running. A example of a good anti-virus software is AVG. AVG is a free virus software and is easy to use. Spy ware and ad ware removal software is also recommended to find and remove spy and ad ware. The use of good anti virus and spy ware software will increase the speed of your system dramatically.

Another problem that decreases computer speed is simply old junk files. As your computer gets older it accumulates old files that do nothing but clutter your hard drive and slow everything down. All windows operating systems have a disk cleanup wizard and it is a lifesaver. The wizard searches for old files that are not used anymore and gives you a list of recommended files to remove. You can remove as few or as many files that you like. It is recommended to at least remove all of the temporary Internet files and the contents of your recycle bin. Although the more of these files are removed, the better your system will run. To access the disk cleanup wizard, simply click start, (all) programs, accessories, system tools, disk cleanup.

With time files on you hard drive become fragmented and this will also slow down your system performance. When a file is moved, deleted, or new files are added beside, fragments become spread out in your hard drive and this causes it to take longer to access programs saved to your hard drive. A simple solution to this problem is to defragment your hard drive. defragmention takes all of the fragmented files and puts them back together so that it is easier for the hard drive to find them. This increases the speed of your computer. To defragment your hard drive, simply click start, (all) programs, accessories, system tools, disk defragmentor. Then select the drive(s) you wish to defragment and click start. It can take a long time to defragment a hard drive, especially if it has never been defragmented before. So start the defragment before bed and let it defragment while you are sleeping!

Does it seem to take your computer an eternity to boot up when you first turn it on? The problem could be as simple as too many startup files. Sometimes when a new file is installed, it is automatically added to the startup folder. This means every time your computer boots up, the program has to open up and load. There are two ways to get rid of unwanted files in the startup. The first way is to simply click start, (all) programs and find the startup tab. Then simply delete the files that you do not want to load at startup. The startup tab in the start menus does not contain all of the files that load on startup. Actually on newer operating systems the tab stays empty. To stop the remaining programs from running at startup you will need to use the system configuration utility. Simply slick start, run, ant type msconfig to access the system configuration utility. Next click the startup tab and de-select the programs you do not want to load when your system boots up.

It is that simple! Using the above steps you should notice a incredible increase in your systems performance. It does not take a lot of money and computer knowledge to make your computer run at its optimum speed. It simply takes a few simple preventive maintenance steps for best results.